Iraqi death researcher censured
An academic whose estimates of civilian deaths during the Iraq war sparked controversy has been criticised for not fully co-operating with an inquiry.

Gilbert Burnham said in the Lancet medical journal in 2006 that 650,000 civilians had died since 2003 - a figure far higher than other estimates.

A polling association in the US said Dr Burnham had refused to supply "basic facts" for its inquiry into his work.

It did not comment on the accuracy of his conclusion.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR)began investigating Dr Burnham's work in March 2008 after a complaint by one of its members.

His research was based on a survey of Iraqi households and concluded that by July 2006 about 655,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the US-led invasion.

The Iraqi government does not keep precise records of civilians killed and neither do US forces, but in 2006 the Iraqi health ministry estimated that between 100,000 to 150,000 civilians had died.

The AAPOR's executive council said in a statement carried by the Associated Press news agency: "When asked to provide several basic facts about this research, Burnham refused."

It said it wanted to know the wording of questions asked and instructions and explanations given to respondents.

"Dr Burnham provided only partial information and explicitly refused to provide complete information about the basic elements of his research," said Mary Losch, chair of the association's standards committee.

She added that Dr Burnham's refusal to co-operate "violates the fundamental standards of science, seriously undermines open public debate on critical issues and undermines the credibility of all survey and public opinion research."

Non-members

A spokesman for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where Dr Burnham works, said they were disappointed AAPOR had said he violated the code of ethics.

However, the spokesman pointed out to AP that neither the researcher nor the school were members of the association.

The level of civilian casualties in Iraq has been a controversial issue ever since the US-led invasion of 2003.

For Dr Burnham's study, researchers spoke to more than 1,800 families comprising 12,800 people, comparing mortality rates in selected areas before and after the invasion.

Its conclusion was undermined by allegations that the number of people surveyed was too small and that the authors may have inflated the figures for political reasons.

The Lancet said it had no comment.

The independent Iraq Body Count, which counts only confirmed deaths, currently has a range of between 90,556 and 98,850.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7869317.stm

Of course, have you noticed that once the military deaths started to decline, the Lancet clowns shut their big mouths?

Odysseus

02-05-2009, 11:20 AM

as long as it's not a story about Israel - BBC can be very fair.

Not when the US military is concerned. Anti-militarism is the anti-semitism of the left.

Molon Labe

02-05-2009, 01:38 PM

Not when the US military is concerned. Anti-militarism is the anti-semitism of the left.

The BBC is probably one of the last vestiges of what can be called fair reporting. If there happens to be an instance of some critical stance toward the U.S. military, I'm certain it's far from being some leftwing bias against the U.S.

Odysseus

02-05-2009, 01:59 PM

The BBC is probably one of the last vestiges of what can be called fair reporting. If there happens to be an instance of some critical stance toward the U.S. military, I'm certain it's far from being some leftwing bias against the U.S.

Their reporting on the US movement through Baghdad during the opening phase of the war was among the worst of any news agency. They uncritically repeated Baghdad Bob's talking points about how we were nowhere near Baghdad, even as it was obvious that US troops were all over the city and crossing it at will. Their coverage of Abu Ghraib and Haditha makes Al Jazeera look like FOXNews.

PoliCon

02-05-2009, 02:08 PM

Their reporting on the US movement through Baghdad during the opening phase of the war was among the worst of any news agency. They uncritically repeated Baghdad Bob's talking points about how we were nowhere near Baghdad, even as it was obvious that US troops were all over the city and crossing it at will. Their coverage of Abu Ghraib and Haditha makes Al Jazeera look like FOXNews.

Wasn't a tie exposed between some very high people in the UK government and the oil for food scandal?

Molon Labe

02-05-2009, 03:34 PM

Their reporting on the US movement through Baghdad during the opening phase of the war was among the worst of any news agency. They uncritically repeated Baghdad Bob's talking points about how we were nowhere near Baghdad, even as it was obvious that US troops were all over the city and crossing it at will. Their coverage of Abu Ghraib and Haditha makes Al Jazeera look like FOXNews.

Of course that is your opinion... I'm quite certain there are plenty who would have welcomed them covering their units as they did so.

I'm not certain any news organization, save Fox, would be sufficient for you then.

Odysseus

02-05-2009, 03:57 PM

Wasn't a tie exposed between some very high people in the UK government and the oil for food scandal?
A few MPs, but nothing like the French, who were hip deep in it.

Of course that is your opinion... I'm quite certain there are plenty who would have welcomed them covering their units as they did so.

I'm not certain any news organization, save Fox, would be sufficient for you then.
Right. It's my problem. No bias in the media, nothing to see. Move along...

Their reporting on the US movement through Baghdad during the opening phase of the war was among the worst of any news agency. They uncritically repeated Baghdad Bob's talking points about how we were nowhere near Baghdad, even as it was obvious that US troops were all over the city and crossing it at will. Their coverage of Abu Ghraib and Haditha makes Al Jazeera look like FOXNews.

Remember when Geraldo Riveria was sent packing from Iraq in the early days of the war because he was drawing positions in the sand?

Molon Labe

02-05-2009, 05:40 PM

Remember when Geraldo Riveria was sent packing from Iraq in the early days of the war because he was drawing positions in the sand?

Yep...Wasn't that Fox news?
Point is....it's everywhere.

Goldwater

02-05-2009, 06:05 PM

The BBC tends to be better than most out there.

Molon Labe

02-05-2009, 07:04 PM

The BBC tends to be better than most out there.

Agreed. The fact is there is really just no way to satisfy all objectivity in reporting. To take the Geraldo example of drawing in the sand. Do I think he's just a stupid journalist with no clue?...Yes. Was he doing it to be malicious? I doubt it.

Sonnabend

02-05-2009, 07:35 PM

Was he doing it to be malicious? I doubt it.

I am not a journalist, and even I know not to discuss troop movements. He did know better and he did it anyway.

Odysseus

02-05-2009, 07:51 PM

Remember when Geraldo Riveria was sent packing from Iraq in the early days of the war because he was drawing positions in the sand?
That wasn't so much his wanting to undermine the mission as his simply being an idiot.

Yep...Wasn't that Fox news?
Point is....it's everywhere.
The difference between Fox and the other media outlets is that when an issue is discussed, the MSM outlets will interview a group of liberals, while Fox will interview both liberals and conservatives. Fox tends to oversimplify news stories, but at least they present both sides, which is more than can be said for CNN, the networks or CNBC. When I was in Iraq, I was part of the daily BUB for our CG, and got to see the big picture. Watching Fox and CNN on alternate days in the DFAC, I saw the same stories that I had just seen briefed covered by two different outlets, and the CNN story was always, not sometimes, but always, inaccurate and biased against us. Fox also made mistakes, but they weren't pervasively biased one way or another, and they generally got the big things right.

The BBC tends to be better than most out there.

Not hardly.

The following is from The Disgrace of the BBC by Josh Chafetz from the August 25, 2003 Weekly Standard:

THE WAR IN IRAQ has left in its wake a string of embarrassments for the BBC that have many questioning its privileged status. Throughout the war, the BBC was consistently--and correctly--accused of antiwar bias. These accusations began almost as soon as the fighting did, when the BBC described the death of two Royal Air Force crew members, after their jet was accidentally downed by a U.S. Patriot missile, as the "worst possible news for the armed forces." On March 26 (less than a week into the fighting), Paul Adams, the BBC's own defense correspondent in Qatar, fired off a memo to his bosses: "I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering 'significant casualties.' This is simply NOT TRUE." He went on to ask, "Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving 'small victories at a very high price?' The truth is exactly the opposite. The gains are huge and costs still relatively low. This is real warfare, however one-sided, and losses are to be expected." Outside critics were even blunter: They revived the nickname "Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation," a coinage from the first Gulf War, when BBC broadcasts from the Iraqi capital were censored by Saddam's government without viewers' being notified.

"What makes the BBC's behavior particularly heinous," noted Douglas Davis, the London correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, "is the relentless indulgence of its penchant for what might be politely termed 'moral equivalence' at a time when Britain is at war with a brutal enemy and its servicemen are dying on the battlefield." Mark Damazer, the deputy director of BBC News, did nothing to dispel that kind of criticism when he said (in a speech to Media Workers Against the War, no less) that it would be a "mistake" for BBC journalists to use the word "liberate" when referring to areas now under coalition control. Stephen Whittle, the BBC's controller of editorial policy, piled on, telling his journalists to refer to the armed forces as "British troops" and not "our" troops.

While Damazer graciously admitted that the BBC "make[s] mistakes," most of those mistakes were distinctly unfriendly towards the coalition. For example, on April 3, after U.S. troops had taken control of the Baghdad airport, Andrew Gilligan (remember that name) reported on the BBC World Service and on the BBC website, "Within the last 90 minutes I've been at the airport. There is simply no truth in the claims that American troops are surrounding it. We could drive up to it quite easily. The airport is under full Iraqi control." That was Gilligan's story, and the BBC was sticking to it--until another correspondent pointed out that Gilligan was not, in fact, at the airport, but U.S. troops quite clearly were.

Two days later, on April 5, Gilligan reported, "I'm in the center of Baghdad, and I don't see anything. But then the Americans have a history of making these premature announcements." At roughly the same time, CNN was broadcasting pictures of the 3rd Infantry driving through the center of Baghdad. By April 11, even the intrepid Gilligan could no longer maintain that the coalition was not in control of Baghdad. So instead he argued that Baghdadis were experiencing their "first days of freedom in more fear than they have ever known before"--that is, that they felt less safe than they had under Saddam. The prime minister's office shot back, "Try telling that to people put in shredders or getting their tongues cut out."

But it's unfair to single out Gilligan: His colleagues were spinning just as egregiously. For instance, on May 15, John Kampfner filed a story in which he called the April 1 rescue of POW Jessica Lynch "one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived." The U.S. Special Forces troops who rescued her "knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital." The Pentagon, he claimed, "had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies" to the extent that the troops had actually gone in firing blanks to make the rescue more dramatic on tape.

This should have struck any professional war correspondent as implausible, to say the least. As a U.S. official deadpanned to the Washington Times, the Navy SEALs who rescued Lynch "are not the type of guys who carry blanks." In fact, an investigation by NBC News found that "the so-called blanks were actually flash-bang grenades used to stun and frighten hospital workers and potential resistance." Hospital workers also told NBC that the Iraqi military had used the basement of the hospital as a headquarters, and that top brass had left only six hours before the raid. And while there was no fighting inside the hospital, there was a firefight between soldiers guarding the hospital perimeter and Iraqi paramilitaries.

Of course, BBC spin usually comes in more subtle forms. The use of scare quotes on the BBC website, for example, often betrays a remarkable contempt for the coalition. When Uday and Qusay Hussein were killed by U.S. troops last month, the website blared, "Saddam sons 'dead'" and "Iraq 'deaths' will have huge effect." The next day, having come to terms with the fact of these deaths, the BBC moved on to questioning their value: "U.S. celebrates 'good' Iraq news." And, as Christopher Hitchens noted in a perceptive Slate essay, you can no longer depend on BBC journalists even for proper pronunciation. The Beeb's announcers habitually mangle Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's last name (pronounced exactly as it looks) to make it more Jewish-sounding: Vulfervitz.

Hitchens isn't the only one who has noticed something not quite kosher in the BBC's treatment of Jews. The Israeli government, responding to a persistent demonization which it says "verges on the anti-Semitic"--including a documentary which erroneously claimed that the Israeli army uses nerve gas on the Palestinians--recently announced that it would no longer cooperate with the BBC in any way. Israel does not impose similar sanctions on any other news organization.

Molon Labe

02-05-2009, 08:15 PM

The difference between Fox and the other media outlets is that when an issue is discussed, the MSM outlets will interview a group of liberals, while Fox will interview both liberals and conservatives. Fox tends to oversimplify news stories, but at least they present both sides, which is more than can be said for CNN, the networks or CNBC. When I was in Iraq, I was part of the daily BUB for our CG, and got to see the big picture. Watching Fox and CNN on alternate days in the DFAC, I saw the same stories that I had just seen briefed covered by two different outlets, and the CNN story was always, not sometimes, but always, inaccurate and biased against us. Fox also made mistakes, but they weren't pervasively biased one way or another, and they generally got the big things right.

That's entirely true...but it's still a bias. Now instead of troop bashing you just have bias in favor of the troops. And it's a welcome change from Vietnam true...but it's still a bias by definition.

And.....You mean Fox has liberals like Alan Colmes and Geraldo Rivera? Little liberal punching dolls? Please! They never have a pundit with an IQ above Forest Gump. I would love to see a debate between at least two intellectuals where they don't shout each other out of the studio with raging slogans.

I love Fox news and I'm glad there is a more conservative slant...it's sure as hell entertaining...but I rarely get my "facts" from the MSM. I'm also glad they are willing to be more objective about the military. ..but I'm also objective enough to know they are just as bad as the other networks we rail on against and that every sector of the U.S. needs scrutiny including our sector the military.

Odysseus

02-05-2009, 08:45 PM

That's entirely true...but it's still a bias. Now instead of troop bashing you just have bias in favor of the troops. And it's a welcome change from Vietnam true...but it's still a bias by definition.
No, they present both sides. In fact, they report stories about us that are less than flattering (Fox covered Abu Ghraib, Haditha and various other scandals, but unlike CNN, they interviewed pro-military sources as well as anti-military sources), but they do so far more even-handedly than the rest of the media, and they don't deliberately disclose classified information (Geraldo being an obvious exception, but Geraldo has always had the IQ of a houseplant).

And.....You mean Fox has liberals like Alan Colmes and Geraldo Rivera? Little liberal punching dolls? Please! They never have a pundit with an IQ above Forest Gump. I would love to see a debate between at least two intellectuals where they don't shout each other out of the studio with raging slogans.
Just how smart is Keith Olbermann, or Chris Matthews, for that matter? True, Geraldo is no Katie Couric, but then, who does that insult? The problem isn't that Fox deliberately hires liberals to spout inane DNC talking points, it's that any liberal that they hire is going to spout the same inane points. They're liberals, remember?

I love Fox news and I'm glad there is a more conservative slant...it's sure as hell entertaining...but I rarely get my "facts" from the MSM. I'm also glad they are willing to be more objective about the military. ..but I'm also objective enough to know they are just as bad as the other networks we rail on against and that every sector of the U.S. needs scrutiny including our sector the military.
First off, I get my facts from the actual sources within the armed forces, not to mention my own observations. I was in country from 2004-2005 and saw events firsthand, plus I sat in the same briefings that our CG got, so I've got a bit more informatoin than the average viewer. Based on that, I've got a pretty good idea of what right looks like, so when I tell you that CNN or the BBC were reporting outright BS, I know it because I saw what was really going on, not because they offended my delicate conservative sensitivities. Based on that, I can tell you that Fox is a lot better than most of the media, because the disconnect between what I saw and what they reported was less than the disconnects of the other outlets.

But, don't take my word for it. I'll open this to every veteran here. Which news outlet got the most things right, which one got the most things wrong, and which ones weren't even trying to get the truth?

Sonnabend

02-05-2009, 08:50 PM

1 000 000 casualties claimed.

Date of invasion: Completed May 1 2003

May 1 2003 - May 1 2008 = 5 years = 365 days x 5 years = 1825 days

remainder:

May 1 2008 - 31 Dec 2008

30 days May 2008
30 days June 2008
31 days July 2008
31 days Aug 2008
30 days Sept 2008
31 days Oct 2008
30 days Nov 2008
31 days Dec 2008

so we get 30 + 30 + 31 + 31 + 30 + 31 + 30 +31 = 244 days

gives us 1825 days plus 244 days = 2069 days from the day the invasion was completed to the end of 2008.(May 1 2003 - 31 December 2008)

1,000,000 divided by 2069 days = 483 deaths PER DAY from May 1 2003 to 31 December 2008 with NO variation whatsoever because if the number of deaths per day is wrong then the mathematics does not support the claimed total of one million dead Iraqis.

So in the month of December 2008 we have 483 deaths per day x 31 days = 14,973 deaths = ....where are all the bodies?